Spring Break

I am incredibly tired.  I spent a majority of my spring break at a five day interviewing process in Charlottesville, Virginia.  It was a good experience, but when every hour of your day is planned out and you are constantly trying to impress a panel of unidentified judges that could be anywhere secretly observing you, it gets pretty tiring.  Unfortunately, I did not enjoy doing concentration pieces at all.  I usually like them, but they just feel like tasks now, not a lot of fun.  I think it stems from a lack of ideas coupled with spending 2 weeks out of town this month and lots of other work to be done.  Hopefully I can get through this check because I think next month will be a lot better

Mid March

I just got back from a five day swim meet in Washington and am feeling pretty terrible.  The meet went really well, but I'm tired, irritated, and behind on everything ... can't say I didn't warn you.

I'm going back to plain old acrylic on canvas this time around.  I'm trying to get away from facial expressions, but it's harder than I thought.  Hands also can being very expressive, but it is challenging to find some hand expressions that aren't completely tacky or really inappropriate.  I'm sure I will figure it out sooner or later.

Feb-March

This month I have been messing around with different ways to add depth to my work.  I never really liked using flat canvasses.  Last time I used the molding paste, and this time I tried layering actual pieces of paper.  One trick I discovered is using acrylic paint over sandpaper.  I don't know if this is a tried technique, but it really helps colors and lines blend easily and is fun to paint on.  I would like to do something with wire next month, but haven figured it out yet.  I'm not quite done with both pieces yet, but I think they are due on Wednesday, so I have a couple more days to finish them.

In other news, Lakeridge Swimming placed very well.  I have another swim meet in Washington in a couple weeks, which should be fun.  We are tapering right now, which basically means I am not allowed to do anything physical outside of swim practice.  It really helps fuel the senioritis!

Tired

I'm finding that the hardest part about the concentrations isn't doing them, but coming up with an idea.  I want to do something in physical raised layers, but I'm not sure how I want to use that idea in an actual piece.  I liked using the light molding paste as an understructure for my last two pieces because it gave both pieces more depth, even if the structure wasn't perfectly contoured to the lines of the face.  I would like to achieve a similar effect with much more defined layers.  This could lead to a more cartoony / abstract representation I suppose.

In other news, the Lakeridge swim team did really well at districts this weekend.  We put a bunch of people through to states, so that should be fun next weekend.  I'm just kind of tired and unmotivated right now, kind of ready for school to be done.

Concentration

They are both acrylic over the light molding paste.  Concentration = expression

Home Stretch

SO, finals are almost here, which means all the seniors will be entering there final semester of highschool.  Kind of scary to think about, but at least most of us are looking forward to college in some capacity.

I was finally able to start a concentration piece early this month.  I had this whole idea for a raised painting using the light molding paste, so we will see how that turns out.  Molding paste is much harder to manipulate than I anticipated, so I cant really make the smooth surfaces I wanted to.  It is kind of fun and challenging to paint over the stuff once it dries.

I wanted to put some more photos from the 100 photos project up, so here are some of those...

Intense Color

Tells a Story

Tells a Story

Taken at Night

Winter Break

So, I had a pretty good winter break.  I didn't do much (which is a change for me) so it ended up being pretty relaxing.  I saw my grandma, swam, and ate a lot of food.

I also spent a lot of time on art.  I tried to space the completion of the projects out over the two weeks so i would do better work, and i think it worked out.  For the concentration pieces, I kept working on expressions, but i still don't really like the idea.  I feel like i'm forcing everything to fit the concentration and consequently, everything becomes more of a task (less enjoyable).  I like drawing/painting because its fun, not because I have to, so i'm going to try and mix it up, try some new things, and not worry as much about the final product.  I started this be doing a piece in color pastel (which i never use).  The piece wasn't great, but I had way more fun on it than I do on usual pieces.  Hopefully improvement will come.

When I started working on the photos project, I thought it was going to be really laborious and boring, but as I worked on it, I enjoyed it more than I expected.  Yes, some of the catogories where tough, I did them at the last minute, and the quality sucks, but more often then not, I got pictures that I actually liked.  Not all of them perfectly match the descriptions, but I still like the photos.  Below are some of my favorites.

Happy 2011!

Intense Color

Simple Shapes

Tells a Story

Old, Rusty, Falling Apart